Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/134

 class of more warlike habits than the settlers in Iceland, and opened a more promising field for their ambition abroad in those expeditions, than in struggling at home against the supremacy of Harald Haarfager. In his successful attempt to reduce all the small kings, or district kings, under his authority, he was necessarily thrown upon the people for support, and their influence would be naturally increased by the suppression through their aid of the small independent kings. This struggle was renewed at intervals until the introduction of Christianity by King Olaf the Saint; and the two parties appear to have supported the two different religions: the small kings and their party adhering to the old religion of Odin, under which the small kings, as godars, united the offices of judge and priest, and levied certain dues, and presided at the sacrificial meetings as judges as well as priests; and the other party, which included the mass of the people, supported Christianity, and the supremacy of King Olaf, because it relieved them from the exactions of the local kings, and from internal war and pillage. The influence of the people, and of their Things, gained by the removal to other countries of that class which at home would have grown probably into a feudal aristocracy. In Iceland an aristocratic republic was at first established, and in Normandy and Northumberland all that was aristocratic in Norway found an outlet for its activity.

A physical circumstance also almost peculiar to Norway, and apparently very little connected with the social state of a people, was of great influence, in concurrence with those two accidental circumstances, in preventing the rise of an aristocracy. The stone of the Peninsula in general, and of Norway in particular, is gneiss, or other hard primary rock, which is worked with difficulty, and breaks up in rough shapeless lumps, or in thin schistose plates; and walls